John Wycliffe Quotes

I believe that in the end truth will conquer

The true Christian was intended by Christ to prove all things by the Word of God: all churches, all ministers, all teaching, all preaching, all doctrines, all sermons, all writings, all opinions, all practices. These are his marching orders. Prove all by the Word of God; measure all by the measure of the Bible; compare all with the standard of the Bible; weigh all in the balances of the Bible; examine all by the light of the Bible; test all in the crucible of the Bible. That which cannot abide the fire of the Bible, reject, refuse, repudiate, and cast away. This is the flag which he nailed to the mast. May it never be lowered!

Scripture is infallible; other teachers... are liable to lead into error. To place above Scripture and prefer to it, human traditions, doctrines, and ordinances, is nothing but an act of blind presumption." From John Wycliff's 'Of the Truth of Holy Scripture', 1378 A.D.

I at this writing am an old man, only three years short of my three score and ten. And they tell me that Wycliffe’s bones have been dug up and burned and cast into the river that leads to the sea. The Church--she thinks--has had her revenge. But, as I hear it, Wycliffe’s writings had already touched one man in Bohemia, John Huss, whom the Church burned several years ago. And though both Wycliffe and Huss be dead, There are rumors of unrest in that small country, unrest caused by those who seek true religion. In England, King Henry rules hand in glove with the Pope, but not forever, I think. We are still here--the Lollards, I mean. Did you guess it? Yes, I have become a “poor priest.” And I will tell you this: the writings of Wycliffe have been driven out of Oxford, but they can be found in every other nook in England. Indeed, many a time I have talked with an Oxford scholar on the road and have seen God open his heart to the truth. This is what Saint Paul meant when he spoke of Christians as being pressed but never pinned. The Church rages, but the truth goes on. Many a stout English yeoman embraces it in these days and leads his family in true godly worship. John Wycliffe was our morning star. When all was darkest and England lay asleep in the deadly arms of the papacy, God sent him to us. The Scripture has come to England. What will it hold back? Soon--though perhaps not in my lifetime-- the dawn will break, and there will be a new day in England.

If you share my frustration with the disparity between the church as Scripture talks about her and what we see reflected in our religious institutions, you’re not alone. You’re standing in a long line that includes the likes of Francis of Assisi, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Wesley, and nameless others who dared to ask the difficult questions and struggled with the uncomfortable answers.

Here’s a bargain. You can take him to a sermon if you don’t take him to a brothel.” Mercy, he suspects, comes from a family where John Wycliffe’s writings are preserved and quoted, where the scriptures in English have always been known; scraps of writing hoarded, forbidden verses locked in the head. These things come down the generations, as eyes and noses come down, as meekness or the capacity for passion, as muscle power or the need to take a risk.

He expressed his own thoughts and teachings thus: “the holy universal Christian Church is a fellowship of the saints and a brotherhood of many pious and believing men who with one accord honour one Lord, one God, one faith and one baptism.” It is, he said, “the assembly of all Christian men on earth wherever they may be in the whole circle of the world”; or again, “a separated communion of a number of men that believe in Christ”, and explained,—“there are two churches, which in fact cover each other, the general and the local church,… the local church is a part of the general Church which includes all men who show that they are Christians.” As to community of goods, he said it consists in our always helping those brethren who are in need, for what we have is not our own but is entrusted to us as stewards for God. He considered that on account of sin the power of the sword had been committed to earthly Governments, and that therefore it was to be submitted to in the fear of God. Such gatherings were frequently held in Basle, where Hubmeyer and his friends zealously searched the Holy Scriptures and considered the questions brought before them. Basle was a great centre of spiritual activity. The printers were not afraid to issue books branded as heretical, and from their presses such works as those of Marsiglio of Padua and of John Wycliff went out into the world.

John Wycliff, the most eminent scholar in Oxford, became prominent in this conflict. His attacks on the corrupt practices of the Church drew him at first into the political struggle then so fiercely raging; but those who thought to use him as an important ally for their own purposes, fell from him as they came to see the consequences of the principles he taught, and he became the leader of those who sought deliverance in a return to Scripture and in the following of Christ. In his treatise, “The Kingdom of God” and in other writings, he shows that “the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only source of true religion,” and that “the Scripture alone is truth”. The doctrine he called “Dominion” established the fact of the personal relation and direct responsibility of each man to God. All authority, he taught, is from God, and all who exercise authority are responsible to God for the use of what He has committed to them. Such doctrine, directly denying the prevailing ideas as to the irresponsible authority of Popes and Kings, and the necessity for the mediatory powers of the priesthood, aroused violent opposition, which was intensified when in 1381 Wycliff published his denial of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, thus striking at the root of that supposed miraculous power of the priests which had so long enabled them to dominate Christendom.

Whoever reads the Scriptures in ‘Wycliffe’s learning’ [the mother tongue, English], will forfeit land, cattle, goods, body, and life from themselves and their heirs forever; and be condemned as heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and complete traitors to England.” That was man’s reward to the true believers in Christ, but their Lord’s reward to them was an everlasting crown of righteousness.

This Master John Wycliffe translated from Latin into English - the Angle, not the angel speech - and so the pearl of the Gospel is scattered abroad and trodden underfoot by swine”.

be ye renewed [or made new again] in the spirit of your soul; 24 and clothe ye the new man, which is made after God in rightwiseness and (in the) holiness of truth. [and clothe ye the new man, which after God is made of nought (or out of nothing) in rightwiseness and holiness of truth.]

John Wycliffe ha traducido el evangelio, que Cristo confió al clero y a los doctores de la Iglesia, para que pudieran administrarlo convenientemente a los laicos... Wycliffe lo ha traducido del latín al inglés, que no es precisamente el idioma de los ángeles. Como resultado, lo que antes solo estaba en el conocimiento de estudiados clérigos y de personas de buen entendimiento, ahora se ha convertido en algo corriente y al alcance de los seglares; de hecho, hasta las mujeres pueden leerlo. Como resultado, las perlas del evangelio han sido esparcidas y echadas a los cerdos.13

John Wycliffe had argued – and indeed very persuasively – that the Bible should be translated into English, so that any man might read its words for himself.

The darkness of evil may have its hour, but the eternal day of goodness will always prevail.

first century CE, the Bible was available in Latin and therefore became

John Wycliffe was born around 1328 in England, and in many truly remarkable ways he prefigured Luther and Luther’s eventual reforms. Wycliffe agitated for a vernacular translation of the Bible so that the people could read God’s Word, and he himself translated most of the New Testament into English—although of course in the fourteenth century it was not the so-yclept Modern English of our own time but the Middle English of Chaucer.* Thus John 3:16 was rendered as “For God louede so the world, that he Ȝaf his oon bigetun sone, that ech man that bileueth in him perische not, but haue euerlastynge lijf.” Wycliffe also worked with others to translate the Old Testament and was as passionate in his day as Luther would be in his own that everyone should know the Gospels in his own spoken language. “Christ and his apostles taught the people in that tongue that was best known to them,” he said. “Why should men not do so now?

Truly aware I am that the doctrine of the gospel may for a season be trampled underfoot. Equally sure I am, that it shall never be extinguished; for it is the recording of truth itself.” —John Wycliffe